Inevitably - if people didn't do that, there'd be no Irish names! Once upon a time, it was the fashion for everyone to do that. [Though: political independence may actually have killed off the language revival?]linguoboy wrote: I use the Irish equivalent of my given name on Irish-language sites. It's such common practice no one bats an eyelash.
Though I must admit i sometimes get a little sirdaniloty when I see some of the wartime politicians making up their own irish names to hide how incredibly english many of them were. Suuure your name is 'Cathal Brugha', you're a real Irishman you. You're certainly not called "Charles St John Burgess" like some sort of Anglo-Irish Protestant... George de Valera from New Jersey, nobody would take him seriously. Eamon de Valera the Irishman, much more of a political future... [That's a weird one, actually... his mother changed his name to 'Edward' when he was thirty!] Irrational, I know, but I can't deny being a little eyebrow-raising about it.
Anyway, I have a bit of a theoretical dilemma when it comes to my name in Irish. I'm torn between the version I first encountered, which was how the name was always translated in the middle ages, and the way that everybody translates it these days. They also have quite different 'feels', and the older version is easier and more pleasant to pronounce... but would probably come across as pretentious or weird (and even if it doesn't, it might feel that way to me).
Fortunately, this is likely to always remain a theoretical problem only, as the chances of my actually learning irish are almost zero (my inability to learn languages, the impossibility/inconceivability of irish phonology, the lack of anyone else to use it with, etc).
[Linguoboy: I thought you were also gay for sex with men?]